September 2005

More digital pics coming soon, including some action shots. In the meantime, I thought I’d put up this great team picture for the Carroll College Pioneers out of Waukesha. My maternal grandfather is on the bottom row, second from the right (Fred Hill, halfback and fullback). Looks like a tough group of Wisconsin boys and they didn’t do too badly. Lake Forest and Lawrence gave them a little trouble, sure, but they prevailed.

I got “the Call” this morning at around 3am. My doctor (Dr. Z) said he thought they had a good lung for me. He asked me to get to the hospital and up to 7-West by 5am. I agreed and we hung up. Then I let the whole thing sink in a little bit. Naturally, my first concern was my fantasy football lineup. I figured if I went into surgery today (Tues.) I might be coherent enough by Sunday morning to set my lineup and even add some of those free agents I’ve been coveting.

My parents are in Russia so my brother and sister are in an unofficial competition as to who gets notified of “the Call” first — my brother Ted is closer during the day so he would get the day call. My sister Sarah lives closer to me so she was lucky enough to get the late night call. I called her at around 3:20am. She was groggy and her voice was that of a tired mouse, “hello?” (“h” not capitalized to indicate smallness.) Once she had her sea-legs, she very kindly offered to pick me up at 4:30am and drive me to the hospital. We hung up.

My mind ticked off the few things I should probably get done before I left. I’m on the French hygiene plan these days. Well, I shower about every other day so I’m still doing better than the French. (Gratuitous shot at the French.) Anyway, I decided I ought to take a shower. I also needed to send my September health insurance premium to my office. Might be a good idea to make sure that thing is paid! I have a transplant notebook open to the page where it describes the difference between a single and a double in surgical terms. I decided it was time to look at those differences. The single looks a lot less crack-your-chest-open than the double so that was reassuring. I was about to call Ted and then take that shower when I got another call from Dr. Z — the transplant was off.

I called Sarah to let her know and she went back to sleep. These false alarms (known as “dry runs” in the transplant community) are fairly common. I’m lucky that I found out it was off before I went into the hospital and got prepped for surgery. I was too pumped to go back to sleep so I wrote this.